The Naked Silo

12" x 9", oil on canvas, 2017, private collection This commission is my last painting for 2017 and it squeezed in almost at the last minute, needing to be done as a Christmas gift. The request was for a blue jay on the handlebars of a child's bike (something very significant for the recipient of the gift).

This is the final (ship construction) part of my quest to see what the Millennium Falcon might have looked like when it was a brand new, factory stock ship (I still have to build the "showroom" she'll be displayed in). There have been illustrations and models of these built by others, but I wanted to build my own interpretation. It was sad to see all the beautiful molded details the ship is known for go away (through scraping, filing, and sanding) but it was a fun challenge to smooth it out and "restore" it to its factory specs...and I like the results. Starboard docking ring. I used some wheel parts from the dragster donor kits to replace the super-greeblied kit parts. My idea here was to have something simple, clean, yet functional-looking; I didn't want just a flat wall with a door. Port docking ring. I guess how these "original" docking rings might work is the ship connects to another ship (or space station, what have you) a...

For a couple of decades, now, I'd been curious about two things concerning the Millennium Falcon: what it looked like as a brand new, unmodified ship ...and how exactly did it work as a "freighter," anyway? That other build takes care of my curiosity about the ship, this one takes care of my curiosity about the freighter question... Hail, Bandai. Bandai Star Wars kits are amazing. Their larger models are super detailed, but even these tiny kits (the Falcon here is about 1/350 scale) are superior to many previous and current Star Wars kits by MPC, AMT, or Revell. Mini sprue tour. Interestingly, this version of the Falcon is the one from Star Wars , having only three landing gear boxes (two more were added to the front for Empire ), but the larger version I built as factory stock had five because it was the version from The Force Awakens . My only (very minor) complaint is that these smaller kits only have stickers instead of decals (the larger kits...